


carrots & ranch

by AlmondRose



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, crystal is a good mom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2019-12-07
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:48:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21707005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlmondRose/pseuds/AlmondRose
Summary: for the first time ever, steph brings some friends home. crystal has a little crisis.
Relationships: Crystal Brown & Stephanie Brown
Comments: 32
Kudos: 210





	carrots & ranch

Crystal parks the car in the driveway and gets out, walking around the car to the stairs leading up to the door of her townhouse. She unlocks the door and walks inside, dropping her bag next to the door and taking off her shoes. 

She doesn’t remember what shoes Steph’d been wearing when she saw her this morning, so she’s not sure if Steph’s home. Except...there’s a pair of vans that are bigger than either Steph or Crystal’s feet, and a pair of converse that are smaller. Crystal frowns and thinks that the boots next to the converse don’t belong to Steph, either. 

Does Steph have people over?

In the last nineteen years of Steph’s life, Steph has never, ever had people over. In the early years, Steph was afraid of Arthur meeting her friends. In the later years, Crystal knows, she too was ashamed of Crystal herself to have people over. Not to mention, the two and a half years Steph was in high school she was  _ also  _ running around the city every night and tended to use the time after school to catch up on missing sleep. 

And then Steph’d died and hadn’t returned to public school, getting her G.E.D. at the manor while Crystal did her most recent round of rehab. Now, Steph is taking classes at GCU, and Crystal couldn’t be prouder, but Steph still usually works on group projects in the library. 

She heads to the kitchen to investigate.

They have four chairs at the kitchen table, despite the fact that there’s only two of them. Crystal had brought the table with her when she moved away from Arthur’s house and into her own, and had left the chairs there in case they ever had company. Apparently, this was a good idea. 

Steph is sitting at her usual chair, her head bent down over her math textbook. Next to her is a girl with short dark hair who is typing away on a computer. Next to that girl is a kid, thirteen or so, with black spiky hair. From the pictures on his open textbook, Crystal would think he’s doing science. The fourth chair is occupied by another boy with dark hair, who is Crystal had to guess was a little younger than Steph herself. He’s also on a laptop. All four are lost in their work. 

The thing is, Crystal recognizes these kids. Of course she does, because she’s Steph’s mom, and because she lives in Gotham and keeps up with local gossip, and because she has monthly lunches with Bruce Wayne, and he basically never shuts up about them. 

Crystal clears her throat, and all four look up. 

“Hi Mom!” Steph says cheerfully. “I hope it’s okay that I brought my siblings over!” 

She sounds confident but looks uncertain, Crystal smiles at her to reassure her it’s okay. 

“Hi, Ms. Brown,” Duke says. “I’m Duke. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too,” Crystal says, feeling weirdly out of her depth. “Steph, why aren’t you guys at the manor? Not that I’m complaining, there’s just...more space over there.”

“The manor is a nightmare zone if you want to get any homework done,” Steph says, rolling her eyes. “It’s  _ so  _ weird, it’s like--Tim usually spends all his time cooped up, but the second you whip out some homework he’s up your ass and won’t leave you alone.”

“God yeah, it’s so annoying,” Duke agrees. “Just ‘cause he’s a dropout doesn’t mean the rest of us have to be.”

“He’s just jealous,” Cass says, but Steph shakes her head and snorts. 

“Doubtful,” she says. Crystal watches them, bemused, and then escapes into the kitchen proper. 

Okay. Steph has never had friends over, and now she does. Is there a protocol, here? Crystal tries to remember what her own mom would do when she brought friends over as a kid. 

Make snacks, right? Crystal can do that. 

She opens the cupboard and thinks  _ what do teenage vigilantes eat?  _

Steph follows a diet thing for her meals but eats normal snacks, but Crystal thinks that probably not all of them do that. She knows from Steph and Bruce that Damian is picky in general and probably would get offended if Crystal offered the wrong thing. Sooo….

She opens the fridge and bingo.

She pulls out the bag of carrot sticks and puts them in a big bowl, getting out the ranch as well. She walks back out to the table. Duke is working on his computer again, and Steph looks up from her math. 

“Dames,” she says. “I still don’t get it.”

“You are impossible,” Damian huffs, and then he gets up from his chair and walks around to stand next to Steph. “Which part of it don’t you get?”

“I don’t understand how the graph works,” Steph confesses, and okay, this thirteen year old is teaching her daughter how to do her college-level statistics class. That makes perfect sense. 

Crystal reaches around Duke to put the carrot sticks on the table. 

“Brought you guys a snack,” she says, and then she backs away. Cass immediately grabs a handful of carrots and Duke takes one. Steph plucks two out of the bowl and hands one to Damian, and then turns her full smile to her mom. 

“Thanks, Mom!” she says. 

“Yeah, thanks Ms. Brown,” Duke says. 

“Thank you,” Cass says before biting into another carrot. 

“Thank you,” Damian says, and then he refocuses his efforts on teaching Steph how to graph whatever she needs to. 

“Well, I’ll leave you to it,” Crystal says, and she goes back to the kitchen to get herself a granola bar, and then she heads to the family room. For some reason, she feels euphoric, like she just passed some sort of mom-milestone. That doesn’t even make sense, she tells herself, because her daughter is nineteen and half the time she lives with the richest man in town and has died and is a teenage vigilante. 

And yet….

Crystal’s glad, weirdly, that Steph is comfortable enough to bring friends over, and not just friends but the people she sees as her brothers and sister. She hopes Steph isn’t ashamed of her anymore, and she hopes that one day she’ll be able to make Steph proud. It’s slow going, sure, but, you know--one carrot at a time. 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! comments & kudos always welcome :)


End file.
